Lifted Up Mark 6:1-13, 2 Corinthians 12:1-10

“Are you sick and tired of being soft, frail, skinny, or flabby – only HALF ALIVE?”
“Are you tired of seeing the huskier fellows walking off with the best of everything?”
“I know just how you feel! Because I myself was once a 97 pound weakling.
But then I discovered a wonderful way to develop my body fast!
In no time at all I became ‘the world’s most perfectly developed man’.”

Whoever thought of featuring Charles Atlas body building ads in the back of comic books
was a genius.
That’s where ten year old boys like me would linger,
with flashlights in make-shift forts fashioned of blankets and dining room chairs
dreaming of getting strong enough to fend off the older boys who tormented us.
My tormentor was my older brother
and I fantasized about what I would do to him after just two weeks
of Charles Atlas’ program of dynamic tension,
him and all his sneering, acne-scarred friends.

I never ordered the free booklet.
What stopped me was the vision of my brother finding it –
And he WOULD find it - I couldn’t hide anything from him.
He would find it and he would wave it about in front of his friends,
ridiculing me in public without mercy.
In my mind, he was the champion of the neighborhood.
I, in my weakness, was lowly and despised.

Charles Atlas, an Italian immigrant whose birth name was Angelo Siciliano,
came to this country in 1905 at the age of 13.
It was a land of opportunity for him and his family, and he made the most of it.
It’s hard to imagine how many of those free pamphlets
he mailed out to boys and men like me,
boys and men like me who were tired of getting proverbial sand kicked in our faces,
who felt weak and longed for greater power in our lives.

Power is something we all long for – personal power, national power -
power for our race, our gender, our class – whatever it takes to get our share.
But conventional power, like happiness, is elusive.
Power, as we tend to think of power, is a commodity of diminishing returns.
The more power we amass, the more we cling to it.
The more we cling to it, the greater lengths we go to to protect it, even by force.
And, paradoxically, once we start resorting to force, our power is lost,
because force is the clearest sign there is that we’ve lost control
in every way that has meaning.

Two hundred thirty three years ago a group of disgruntled New World colonists
signed a document rejecting the tyranny of King George III
and asserting their desire to be self-governing.
The king sent troops to quash the rebellion.
At the moment he made that decision, the colonists won.
Had the French not jumped in on our side
we may not have won the first war, but that’s almost irrelevant.
Violence used in the service of power
is never a sign of strength, only temporary domination.
No matter how it played out, the days of King George III were numbered.


“Power” is a difficult concept to get a handle on.
This past week we’ve seen conventional assumptions about power turned upside down:
• Mark Sanford has shown us that even governors have to account for their whereabouts.
• Michael Jackson’s untimely death has demonstrated
that even massive talent and global fame aren’t enough
to make up for the debilitating effects of a distorted self image.
• As American troops pull back from Iraqi cities
and Iraqi citizens brazenly cheer their departure
we see that that even dominating firepower and noble intentions
can’t make everyone want to be on our side.

When John Calvin, the church Reformer whose birthday we celebrate today,
talked about total depravity as the human condition
I think he was speaking primarily about our inability as humans
to grasp the true concept of power.
Total depravity doesn’t mean that everything we do is bad.
It simply means that any good we do is from God.
And we seem to always have the impulse to leave God out of the equation,
to toot our own horn and take all the credit.

That was the original sin, after all.
It isn’t sex as Augustine tried to tell us.
It is our failure to accept that God is in charge,
that our power is limited,
and that our power is to be found in obedience to God,
not in grasping after the forbidden fruit that always seems out of reach.

The testimony of the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments,
is that power is only God’s to grant.
And God’s power is always going to be found in the hands of an unlikely band of Jews
more than in the hands of Pharoah.
It is always going to be found in the hands of a shepherd with a slingshot
more than in the hands of a giant with a sword.
It is always going to be found in a humble teacher riding a donkey
more than in a mighty warrior riding a valiant steed.
God’s power is always going to be found in the one crucified
more than in those who do the crucifying.

Paul understood the upside down nature of power in God’s realm.
With the church in Corinth he ran smack into a group of Jewish Christian missionaries
who had come to Corinth in Paul’s absence
claiming to have a special hotline to God.
They were critical of Paul, they made fun of his stutter and the funny way he walked,
and they bragged that they had more spiritual power than Paul could ever dream of.
Paul could have kept quiet, but he feared for the church in Corinth.
He didn’t want this conceptual distortion to persist.
So he addressed the issue of power head on.

Paul was reluctant to tell of the supernatural vision he’d had,
the experience of being lifted up into God’s presence.
It would have made a great dramatic testimony on the religious channel
but as grateful as he was for the experience,
Paul had the spiritual maturity to know that such a vision was not a source of power
nor did it have the capacity to sustain over the long haul.
Paul knew that it was his struggle more than his success that gave him strength.
It was his suffering more than his comfort that gave him endurance.
It was his experience of unanswered prayer more than any blessing he could name
that was the source of his power – or better, the source of God’s power in him.

That’s the paradox of power in God’s realm.
The weaker we are, the less cluttered is the conduit
through which God can display God’s power in us.
The richer we are,
the higher the political office we hold,
the more military weapons we control,
and, yes, Charles Atlas, the more physical strength we possess –
the more clogged that conduit gets.

Jesus found that even familiarity can clog the conduit of God’s power.
Who would have thought that among his hometown family and friends
he would be able to accomplish so little.
But the conduit of power in Nazareth was stuffed tight with concern
about Jesus’ place on the social ladder.
He was the son of questionable parentage.
He was a child of the laboring class, a barely skilled craftsman
who was forbidden to even look someone of the upper class square in the eye.
Yet here he was, standing up to teach, and teaching with authority,
giving new, dynamic meaning to old worn out texts.
“Where’s he getting this stuff?” they asked.
What they really meant was, “Who does he think he is?”

That’s why, later, when Jesus sent his disciples out two by two to test their wings
he told them to pack lightly.
Keep it simple. Stay humble.
Accept the hospitality of those who welcome you
to remind you that none of us can go it alone.
And if anyone challenges you,
if anyone rejects you,
if anyone questions your right to be where you are doing what you’re doing
don’t get into a power struggle.
Don’t try to force yourself on them.
As Paul would say, “Power is made perfect in weakness.”
Just clean your sandals and move on.

Charles Atlas had such appeal because he tapped into our fear of being powerless;
our worry about coming across as a weakling.
He fed into that persistent myth that power has to do with brute strength
or a capacity to use violent force.
Charles knew like we know that there are plenty of people and things in this world
that conspire to bring us low:
Political opponents, physical and emotional bullies, enemies of the state,
isolation, disease, disability and death.
That’s why it’s so important for us to meet here in this place,
to meet here and share together the sacrament of communion.

John Calvin said that when we share the sacrament of communion together,
it is as though we who have been brought low are lifted up into heaven.
In this sacrament our weakness gives way to God’s power.
For these few moments we are made one in Christ
and we get a taste of the heavenly banquet
For these few moments we who are crippled and weak and distorted
reflect the golden glow of God’s presence
and become, by God’s grace, the most perfectly developed women and men.